Please, I have nothing left of you but this,
and it is a thing I do not sacrifice with ease.
Understand, that nostalgia is a virus I grow weary of nurturing,
and memory has grown heavy with age.
Your words were bright within me once,
and I, greedy, grown gluttonous with solitude,
devoured them, secreted them within time-worn crevasses
where not even you could touch.
My greatest weakness, your sun-bright words,
and my greatest mistake,
that I could not share them,
not even with you.
Please, your burden remains in me a simple thing,
a lifeline to a life abandoned.
I am pulled, swayed, forced unwilling
by the influence of your impressive fortitude,
your undying brilliance.

Do you live in me?
Is that your ageless mechanism of survival?
I find myself enraptured, captivated by the
spectacular miracle of your endurance.
I find myself swamped and sweaty with dread,
that the parts of myself enchanted by you will
never know emancipation.
Suicide of thought, I think,
these things I stand to lose.
(pieces of you and me, together in frightening symbiosis -
sustained too long.)

Freedom is a thing of revolution and martyrs,
heroics and song and (yes) poetry.
Am I, in this excision, a hero?
Do I, with this cut, find freedom?
I have known, and nurtured, loss of a thousand hues.
I do not justify losing you.
Understand, please, the choices made in fever,
the knowledge gained by fear.
 
Finally, (so soon!) you are fading into the light.
And I, alone, am left praying,
praying…